Students discuss national security

The future of U.S. national security policy may be decided in Washington, D.C., but it is being heatedly discussed this week at IU.

A conference on “Changing National Security Priorities: 2013-2020” continues Friday in the Georgian Room of the Indiana Memorial Union. The two-day conference, organized by School of Public and Environmental Affairs adjunct lecturer and former CIA agent Gene Coyle, brought together experts in many areas of the
intelligence field.

“Professor Coyle and others at SPEA took advantage of the relationships they had with past coworkers at the CIA, recent graduates and others that IU has connections with,” said SPEA associate professor Beth Cate, a conference panelist. “The result was a wide range of explorations and sessions to benefit from.”

The keynote speaker was Mary Beth Long, former assistant secretary of defense for international affairs.

“Mary Beth became the highest ranking civilian female in the history of the Pentagon when she was about 32 or 33,” Coyle said, as he introduced Long’s keynote address.

Long was quick to get to her point.

“The state of our national intelligence is really in dire straights,” Long said. “It is such a mess that it is actually a threat of its own.”

Long’s opinion is a result of her experiences as a government employee. She listed a number of occasions when agencies such as the FBI, CIA and Drug Enforcement Agency were unsure of what role they were meant to play in new threats to national security because of lack of communication and oversight.

Concerns like Long’s were the source of heated conversations throughout the
conference during sessions and panel discussions. Friday’s topics focus on thematic issues including cyber security, national resource scarcity and privacy.

Thursday’s sessions centered on regional concerns including China, North Korea and the Middle East.

First-year graduate student and ROTC cadet Garrett Guinivan said one of the reasons he attended a forum was because of his friends deployed in Iraq.

“Learning about the issues in the Middle East in this way is not like reading a book,” Guinivan said. “To hear views on the situation from people like Ambassador Feisal Istrabadi, the director of the Center for the Study of the Middle East, is really great.”

Junior Alex Wilson said the conference was an opportunity to learn more about a field he has recently been gaining interest in.

“It seems like most of the studies and conversations about national security take place on the East Coast, near D.C.,” Wilson said. “It’s encouraging for me as a student at IU to see a conference like this here in Bloomington.”  

Organizers of the conference such as Cate said they hope the ideas talked about will highlight the importance of future public conversations on national security.

“The promise of conversations like this is not immediate impact,” Cate said. “It’s really about getting people to think about and talk about the issues so we can be prepared for the next generation of
security challenges.”